


Sights Unseen: The First Commandment

by aadarshinah



Series: Sights Unseen [4]
Category: Stargate - All Series, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Broken Engagement, Episode: s01e06 The First Commandment, Past Abuse, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 23:11:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1406095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aadarshinah/pseuds/aadarshinah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing moments from SG1's "The First Commandment."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sights Unseen: The First Commandment

**Author's Note:**

> As part of my [Great SyFy Rewatch](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/293285.html), I'm writing a drabble for each (or most) episode of SG1 as I watch them. Lots of background, lots of head!canons, with eventual aim toward Sam/Jack. It's also sort of distant, distant background to my [Ancient!John](http://archiveofourown.org/series/11336) series, but reading one is not requisite for the other - although this will serve as an expansion of what occurs in ["Fratris Filii"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/306512).

**14 September, 1997 – Stargate Command, Earth, Milky Way**

"Captain Carter, I am curious."

"About what?" Sam asks, unbuckling her TAC vest. It's been a long, stressful day and all she really wants is a nice hot shower and a decent meal, but she's not going to begrudge Teal'c his questions. He's not going to learn anything about Earth if they don't tell him, especially since he's not allowed off-base yet.

"You were previously betrothed to Captain Hanson, correct?"

There is a decided pause in which Daniel and Colonel O'Neill studiously do not say anything before she answers, "Yeah." She continues to stow her gear rather than look at Teal'c, already feeling her face heating up. Sam doesn't know why – people break engagements all the time – but there it is.

"Captain Hanson was significantly older than you."

And that's… not the question she was expecting. "Twelve years. Why do you ask?"

"Is such a difference between spouses the custom on this world?"

"Well, I wouldn't say it's the custom, but it's not exactly out of the ordinary either."

Daniel, thankfully, rescues her before she's expected to go into much further detail. Even if she could, she's not sure she'd want to. "What Sam means to say is, marriage customs vary widely across Earth. In this country, in this century, people tend to marry for love, but in different places and different times, it was more common for arranged marriages, where age differences such as the one between Sam and Captain Hanson were not unheard of."

"I see," Teal'c says in that solemn way of his. "And so your parents arranged this union?"

This manages to startle a laugh out of her. "God no. The one time Dad met Jonas, he hated him." More than hated, really. But he'd never liked any of her boyfriends, so Sam hadn’t ever made much of it. His 'I told you so' after she called off the engagement had been particularly vocal, however, and she'd not spoken to him since. Though that’s been less out of a sense of lingering outrage than inability to explain her current posting and its seeming derailment of her career.

"If that is the case, Captain Carter, why did you agree to marry him in the first place?"

"Moment of insanity?" she says, only half-jokingly.

It's just… Jonas had been so charming at the beginning. She'd believed that his attention to what she did and where she went and whom she did it with had actually been due to genuine interest. When he'd wanted her to spend time with him rather than with her friends or coworkers, she'd been flattered by his attentions. But from there it progressed to the point where Sam couldn't go anywhere without telling him and couldn’t see her friends without being given the third – and fourth – and fifth – degree.

He'd never tried to hit her – perhaps he'd known she'd have walked flat out on him if he'd tried – but it was still abuse, she realizes now. At the time, however, it had been so much harder to see. She hadn't been sure she wasn't making a huge mistake, effectively sabotaging her only chance at anything resembling a normal life.

For a moment, no one seems to know what to say to this. But then Colonel O'Neill, closing the door of his locker with rather more force than is necessary, says-

"It means even Carter can make mistakes, Teal'c."

-and that's that, and no one ever mentions Jonas to her again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to ParadoxR for the poste facto beta.


End file.
